“Walt Disney never did justice to Chicken Little’s hurdles.” — Richard Martin Oxman There’s a NEW obstacle, a fresh difficulty you must face in your race to right the wrongs of society… if you’re a proactive concerned citizen dealing with any one of our many collective crises. And there are far too few activists engaged in meaningfully confronting the multiple challenges which[Read More…]

              Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97), rightly credited as the first feminist philosopher, though the term feminism was not available in the discourse of that era, by the Enlightenment-inspired passion for reason,dared to rationally think and publically express her thought, a philosophical taboo for women at the time. By defying and challenging the prevalent social role models and stereotyped notions of[Read More…]

India has been home to a variety of arts and crafts which have won it a coveted place in the cultural heritage of the world. Handloom is one of the most exquisite textile traditions of India, and weaving was once the largest income generating activity in the country.  The weavers’ craft is threatened with extinction by power looms which offer[Read More…]

  Much is said, and rightly so, about the excesses of the press. Despite press codes and press laws  ,partisan journalism continues to rule with an untrammeled pen.  The press, enjoys the widest freedom.? Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of[Read More…]

  “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s in ability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal “I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.” — Charlotte Bronte Self-discipline and self-mastery can be considered — for all practical purposes — the sole basis of true freedom. True good — compassion and each of its lovely[Read More…]

  Life of Gandhi and his contribution to human empowerment has been discussed a lot but the sufferings of his wife – Kasturiba – has not been given the same importance. She bore all the burdeeen of the house as a typical traditional housewife and her contribution towards the family and society should not be under- estimated. On the 74[Read More…]

  ” Except in the desserts, at every place of human habitation, there is the left, the centre and the right. This will continue to be 10,000 years hence” Mao (22-4- 68) Last few years, the right wing atrocities have increased all over the world in general and India in particular. Many people belonging to subaltern communities suffered due to[Read More…]

According to the World Bank Report(1994), poor elderly population of India usually faces the problems of earning from assets in old age, because of poor credit and insurance markets and also absence of  traditionally  extra familial welfare institutions. Traditionally, their offspring bears the burden of caring for the elderly parents. The family maintains basic safety and security of its members[Read More…]

  A dignified aura of its rich past cloaks every corner of Aurangabad, a bustling city in Maharashtra. The crowning minarets that dot the city landscape and the villages around it, dissolve into the mist of history as the lavender of the evening glow envelopes the monuments from which writers extract magical romances for their books. Legends abound of the[Read More…]

Picture two parents (couple A) living in a cave eons ago. They don’t have much of a sexual drive and so they only have two children. One of the two gets eaten by a tiger and the other drowns in a river flood. Couple B has a strong sexual drive. So they wind up having ten children. Two die from[Read More…]

  The story goes that Einstein’s theory of relativity began with a simple question: What if a person could sit on a beam of light? A single inquiry led to an entire field of study, and perhaps the world’s most famous scientific breakthrough. The late Ed Herman’s questions were less playful. They were about war and death, lies and power[Read More…]

(CNS): It is a common practice to interview celebrities and share their success stories. But the real grass roots heroines and heroes rarely get heard. So, for a change, let us listen to what our 13 year old Raveena has to say on girls’ education. It is high time our policy makers paid heed to the experiential knowledge of people[Read More…]

  “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?” — Rainer Maria Rilke The first time I was in Savannah, Georgia — which was around the time Ruby Bridges was having difficulties in New Orleans — my parents drove along the streets that James Oglethorpe laid out in squares when he founded the colony of Georgia[Read More…]

  “A few of the major textbooks don’t even mention the Black Panthers, while most give the organization only a sentence or two. Even the small number that do devote a few paragraphs to the party, give little context for their actions and distort their ideology. “ — Adam Sanchez and Jesse Hagopian of the Zinn Education Project Black Panther, its[Read More…]

Dedicated to my new community… with the intention of providing a model for many communities across the globe. One way I can contribute to reducing gang violence, securing shelter for the homeless and/or helping local citizens to provide better for themselves is to open a Free Gang and Homeless College that would include tutoring and other socially-conscious services gratis. I could secure[Read More…]

  Across the world, many democracies are in crisis and the civilization is crumbling. The crisis erupts because there is an impoverishment of political life where intolerance, greed, ignorance and rageare growing recklessly. The vibrancy of the democracies is diminishing as the public sphere of informed democratic dialogue is shrinking. Blatant lies, infantile emotionalism, absolute disrespect, open display of religious[Read More…]

When he was between the ages of 11 and 16, Paul Gauguin attended a Catholic boarding school in France. At the school, the Bishop of Orléalns himself taught the class in liturgy. The bishop had devised a catechism in which three main questions were asked: “Where does humanity come from? Where is it going? How do we proceed?” It is[Read More…]

Historians will tell you that an explosion of creativity occurs the moment the world starts complaining that there is nothing left to invent or that the search for solutions to complex problems has come to an end. This explosion is fate’s way of reminding us that there is always something just over the horizon of knowledge. Social entrepreneurs are now[Read More…]

  Sonoma County, California: The organic Kokopelli Farm has been my home, as well as my main work, identity, and love, for the last two-dozen years. Then I fell into a badger hole in the ground, covered by grass, on Jan. 15 this year. I crawled painfully uphill back into the house, as if I were a baby. This unwelcome[Read More…]

Last night, my last dream had me sitting all of a sudden bolt upright in bed. It was of an event that happened recently (this week) in New England, USA concerning a parent murdering his child and committing suicide. Derry, NH, father killed himself and 6-year-old son by carbon monoxide poisoning It is happening all of the time, too, since[Read More…]

Transhumanism is knocking at the door. Dubbed as Humanity+ or H+, the idea to radically revolutionize humanity has emerged in the last decades as a global intellectual movement. With a slogan of melding humans with the machine, it aims to radically alter human nature by means of technological advancement. Proponents of transhumanism envision a human that goes beyond its current[Read More…]

  The older that you become — the more trauma that you will have experienced in life. It’s a given fact of life. Trauma can start very young. It did for the thousands of orphans, little children whose parents and other relatives were killed in wars. The loved ones died without being combatants, but were collateral damage as civilians. It[Read More…]

“Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages” — from Bob Dylan’s Thunder on the Mountain “All trustworthy souls are orphans.” — Herman Melville “The whole purpose of life is to learn, teach and love,” Douglas Schifter wrote in his final Facebook post. In addition to driving for four decades, he[Read More…]

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose.  Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose. Troy was in trouble in 2011. Innocent, but on Death Row… so we circulated a petition. Lots of heartbeats spent, but it was worth all the time and energy and money that went into gathering those signatures. For we got[Read More…]

“We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.” — Oliver Sacks According to Talk Talk Mobile (London), the percentage of Britons aged 18 to 25 who find it easier to express themselves in emoji than in words is 72. Let’s say that they’re off by[Read More…]

The haunting works made by the painter Ahmed Alsoudani are born out of extreme states of violence. The artist grew up in Baghdad, Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq War and the First Gulf War, but he was forced to leave the country as a teenager after vandalizing a mural depicting Saddam Hussein. His paintings, drawings and prints are laden with elements[Read More…]

  I have a friend in India. His father never made much money, although he was an MD, who worked around ten hours a day for five or six days a week in his profession. Now, why is that? Why paltry wages? Often the people, who came to him, were financially poor. They could not pay for his medical services,[Read More…]

My cat likes to watch some YouTube videos. So we spend around a half hour a day watching them together. Here are two of her favorites. (They are somewhat boring to me.) CAT GAMES – SUPER STRING THING (FOR CATS ONLY) – YouTube ▶ 3:41 Jun 10, 2017 – Uploaded by Gaming Palooza Empire Gaming Palooza Empire. … Thanks for supporting[Read More…]

People are crazy and times are strange I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range I used to care, but things have changed  — from Bob Dylan’s Things Have Changed The year 1966 brought an unwelcome hiatus from Bob Dylan’s ceaseless productivity; he was in a terrible motorcycle accident, and took some time off to recover. To fill the void, Columbia Records[Read More…]

“Dawkins… seems to suffer from a ‘god in the sky’ childhood Bible indoctrination. “ — excerpt from a colleague referring to Richard Dawkins “From the oscillating universe beating like a gigantic heart to the puzzling existence of antimatter, order — in a human sense — is at least partially an illusion. Ours — in reality — is the order of a time, and[Read More…]

  I was sad to read that Binu, editor at Countercurrents, has been recently suffering. I, actually, have genuinely loved Binu and his family for more than ten years while following their personal and professional affairs. So I was sad to read his words: “I was walking through a desolation row for the last few days. I felt burnt out,[Read More…]

This is a real story. An ancient continuum – like a play that’s been unfolding itself since times beyond recorded or remembered history. Before getting familiar with the main characters of this play, let us know of the great teller – the folk. Roughly sixty thousand years ago[i], the folk, who are the people of the world, moved out of[Read More…]

  “Who would study and describe the living, starts /By driving the spirits out of the parts: /In the palm of his hand he holds all the sections, /Lacks nothing, except the spirit’s connections.” Mephistopheles warning to the student in Goethe’s Faust   “And how far would you like to go in?” he asked and the three kings all looked[Read More…]

The unexpected demise of V.M. Sathish—a veteran Expat-journalist who spent a quarter century of reporting in the GCC countries—has left a deep vacuum in the domain of ‘human interest’ writings in the world of media. Sathish has a reputed track-record in Expat-journalism.  Beginning with the Indian Express  Group of newspapers in Mumbai, he held many positions over the next  two[Read More…]

John Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men midway through the 1930s, the most creative decade of his career. During that time he was becoming increasingly concerned, it seems, about social and economic problems in California, what Upton Sinclair was focusing on in his End Poverty in California movement. In fact, he published three successive novels about farm workers during that[Read More…]

  Recently, an article of mine was posted which received a record number of responses (for my pieces). I’m using that work as a point of departure here for providing another submission which I hope will generate as much interaction, feedback. If you glance at the short previous work first (link above), the ten points below might resonate better than[Read More…]

One of my friends sent me this email. Let’s call him P.: Probably most of you have seen seemingly outlandish allegations about powerful Washington figures involved in pedophilia. They seem so outrageous that there is a tendency to reject them out of hand. However, there are a couple of corroborating facts. First there is Epstein’s island in the Caribbean and[Read More…]

  A week after the U.S. 9/11 I was in France conducting an art workshop for painters from various parts of the globe, and I was thinking about the Chilean 9/11. I suggested a little quiz — ten definitions of an activist, and from those ten those engaged in plein aire painting had to choose four definitions that would combine[Read More…]

  “Against Nature’s silence I use action In the vast indifference I invent a meaning I don’t watch unmoved I intervene and say that this and this are wrong and I work to alter them and improve them The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world[Read More…]

  Last night I dreamt of an organic farm collective related to cows . On the collective’s milk containers were the words: “By rule and law, this milk is not to be used to kill, trap or poach.” In response, I thought in the dream that it was admirable, but foolish to make such a claim or legal demand. For[Read More…]

Special note: The author is not addressing Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle here. “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth….” — John Keats Activists — in part, because their prose has become mostly soooooo boring and repetitive and ineffectual — need to[Read More…]

  “Howard Zinn once wrote a book titled, You Can’t Stay Neutral on a Moving Train, and that’s especially true when you’re headed for a precipice. Right now, activists need to be bonded with the owner of the train or be the engineer.” — Richard Martin Oxman The answer to the title of this article shouldn’t be attempted with a[Read More…]

I started working in India in the Anamallai Hills, part of the Western Ghats as they tapered down all the way into the tip of the subcontinent. Before that I had worked for five years in bauxite mining in Guyana, South America and lived on the bank of Rio Berbice, in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest. But that[Read More…]